Historically, lists of popular media have typically been provided on a retrospective basis. That is, media popularity is measured for some prior period, such as a day, a week or even a month earlier, and then subsequently published for review by others. While this is useful for consumers in planning future media consumption, it falls short in assisting users in quickly identifying and choosing among current, real time media consumption, such as, for example, which of hundreds of currently airing television programs may be of interest to watch right now.
For example, in conventional cable television systems, subscribers and users have limited interaction with a set top box (STB) to access the services and channels they subscribe to. Generally, this access is provided through a run-time environment or user interface (UI). While conventional STB UIs display schedule information, they do not have the ability to display real time usage data of channels or programs currently being watched.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system that enables real time or near-real time feedback of media consumption patterns occurring for media that is presently available, that enables a user to select media to view based on popularity of the media.